


Migraine

by taylor_tut



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Headaches, Headaches & Migraines, Sick Character, Sick Fic, Sickness, Vision - Freeform, Vision Problems
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-20
Updated: 2017-06-20
Packaged: 2018-11-16 07:25:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11249091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taylor_tut/pseuds/taylor_tut
Summary: When Lance gets migraines, they don't just hit him full force. They also cause him problems with his vision. It's just his luck that a migraine appears as they are fighting the Galra.





	Migraine

“Lance, 3:00,” Shiro barked. The sharpshooter turned his head so that he could see the armed Galra soldier around his migraine aura. The team knew that they were working around a gaping hole in his vision. That had become apparent when Lance had tripped over a freaking chair, of all things, and given away their stealth advantage.

“Lance, watch where you’re going next time!” Keith had yelled, but when he looked over at the kid, he wasn’t happy with what he saw. Lance was pale and squinting as if he were trying to look through fogged glass. He was turning his head at odd angles to look at things out of the corners of his eyes.

“What’s going on, Lance?” Shiro had called out to him from behind as they retreated from a room full of Galra. Each of the paladins, save for Lance, had managed to take a few out, and now their main concern was finding somewhere secluded and safe so they could figure out why Lance had not taken even one shot at a soldier, and why he was sweating so much.

“M’sorry,” Lance slurred, not opening his mouth far enough to properly speak through gritted teeth. “I’m havin’ a little trouble seeing,” he admitted.

“What?!” Hunk had exclaimed. Lance grunted and winced.

“Oh, Lance,” Pidge breathed, putting two and two together. She’d seen him have an ocular migraine once before, at Garrison. They’d been studying, and Lance had slammed his book shut in frustration. “How bad?” she asked.

“I’ve got about 20% clarity in my left eye; nothing in my right,” he admitted. Holy shit, she thought. That was bad. There were Galra behind them, and that was bad, too.

“What’s Pidge talking about?” Shiro demanded, clearly not comfortable being left out of the loop.

“It’s nothing,” Lance waved him off, “Just a migraine. They do weird things to my vision, sometimes. I can’t see.” Keith was astonished at how blase Lance was being about the whole “near blindness” thing.

“It’ll go away when the migraine does,” Lance whispered, and Pidge wondered for the first time if maybe he was worse off than he was letting on.

“Can you shoot at all?” Keith asked. It was a lame question, and he felt like a jerk for having to ask, but their lives sort of depended on it, here.

Lance hesitated. “Yeah,” he said uncertainly, “Yeah. I just need to be told where to shoot.”

That’s how they ended up here, with Lance nearly completely blind, running from Glara soldiers, and shooting at targets that he more or less had to just trust were there at all.

“Lance, 9:00!” Keith warned. Lance turned to shoot but missed twice in succession. Shiro panicked, enveloping himself around Lance’s body and physically turning his gun to shoot the Glara soldier with the blue paladin’s weapon. Had Lance been in his right mind, he’d have made some joke about this looking like a scene from a shitty rom-com. The absence of that joke put Keith on edge.

“This isn’t working, Shiro,” Hunk surrendered, “We’ve got to cut our losses and get back to the castle. Lance isn’t in any condition to fight.”

“I’m fine,” Lance bit out, shooting blindly at an empty doorway.

“Yeah, we should go,” Shiro agreed.

But it wasn’t until they finally, finally got into a basement to hide that it finally occurred to anyone that Lance might be in pain, too.

“Alright, Pidge, contact Allura asking for a wormhole. We need to get out of here,” Shiro instructed. “Hunk, Keith, and Lance, we’re all going to patrol this area and make sure that no one gets in.”

Keith and Hunk nodded, but Lance didn’t respond. He was leaning heavily against the wall, which they had assumed had been from mere exhaustion, but now that they looked at him up close, that didn’t seem to be the case. Lance’s eyes were shut tight and his face was scrunched in pain. Everything about his stiff posture screamed agony, and he was worryingly still.

“Lance?” Keith tried, but no luck. Lance had checked out.

Hunk cursed. He, too, was no stranger to Lance’s migraines, even as rare as they were, but he hadn’t noticed. And he called himself Lance’s best friend.

“He’s in pain,” Hunk explained. “Lance, buddy, can you hear me?” Lance reached out for Hunk’s hand and squeezed it, not ready to respond verbally. The adrenaline had been a hell of a painkiller, but now that it had worn off, the full force of the migraine was hitting him hard.

“Give me a number, buddy,” Hunk pleaded, “Scale of 1 to 5.” Lance held up four fingers. Hunk had never seen him hold more than a tentative 3. “Okay, we’re going to get you back,” Hunk promised.

“He’s in pain?” Shiro asked. “What’s wrong with him?”

“He’s got a bad headache,” Hunk replied. Shiro’s mind raced.

“When was he hit?” he exclaimed. Lance had a concussion and he hadn’t even seen him go down? What kind of leader was he?

“No, no,” Hunk replied, “it’s nothing like that. It’s a stress thing. He used to get them at school, too. These crazy, mind-numbing headaches that would knock him out of commission for the whole day. He wouldn’t be able to even turn on his computer because the light and the noise were too much.”

Keith paled. Was Lance that sick?

“Why didn’t you tell us you had a migraine before we left?” Keith asked. Lance whimpered against the noise of his accusatory voice.

“I didn’t,” was all he could manage. “M’sorry,” he apologized again, so quietly that Keith had to strain to hear. The red paladin stood and walked away from the group, but no one really noticed. All eyes were on Lance.

“They usually come on fast,” Pidge offered. “He might not have had it before we got here. Allura’s opening a wormhole,” she concluded. “We’ve just got to get to the Lions.”

Shiro scooped up a protesting Lance in his arms and felt a sort of fatherly pride stir in his chest when Keith returned with a bit of fabric he’d torn off an unconscious Galra soldier’s uniform and tied it over Lance’s eyes to block the light. Lance relaxed so suddenly and violently that Shiro was sure he’d passed out.

“Hang in there,” he whispered to the boy, “We’re almost home.”


End file.
